


Red

by trickstersGambit



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood, Color Blindness, Friendship, Gen, Other, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, astigmatism, partial hearing loss, someone left me alone with headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickstersGambit/pseuds/trickstersGambit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers was always weak, small and sickly. He had asthma. He'd had ear infections as a child that had muted everything and made him have to focus on people's mouths as they spoke, never meeting their eyes, which grew harder as he grew older and his eyes grew worse. On top of that, Steve was color blind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unliscensedworthologist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=unliscensedworthologist).



Steve Rogers was always weak, small and sickly. He had asthma. He'd had ear infections as a child that had muted everything and made him have to focus on people's mouths as they spoke, hardly ever meeting their eyes for long, which grew even more challenging as he grew older and his eyes grew worse. On top of that, Steve was color blind. The world, for him, was a thick, murky grey-green, filled with quiet noises. It always had been. He knew other colors existed, had heard of them before, mostly in the moments where his friend expressed concern over his health. 'Your cheeks are really rosy today. Are you running a fever? Should we get you home?' Steve would stubbornly shake his head and insist he was fine right up to the moment where he sat down and passed out.

He never knew the real color of blood, though he wore it on his face and clothes often enough, and others wore it on their knuckles when he intervened on the behalf of someone who was otherwise unable to defend themselves--not that he was much better but he was always followed up by his long time best friend, so he was never quite as without defenses as the dame, or kid, or helpless animal, or old man, or whomever happened to gain the brunt of any given bully's full attention.

That said, in a world where color was a not-thing for Steve, he was utterly determined to become an artist. He wanted to overcome his challenges, like his asthma or the astigmatism that plagued him by blurring his world less than a foot out from his face.

He could be found pouring over purloined news papers, comic books, anything with art in it, desperately soaking up whatever he could from the books. His own sketchbook filled with copies of the images he'd found in all the wrong colors... Bucky never had the heart to correct him, and no one but the two of them ever saw that book, so it wasn't as though it mattered much.

Then the war broke out. Steve had been first in line to try to enlist, with Bucky following right behind him ('If you make it, you're gonna need someone to watch your back and like hell I'm staying behind while you have all the fun.')

And he'd been turned down, immediately. He was scrawny. He couldn't breathe properly. His back was bent. He couldn't see. He'd never make it as a soldier...

But Bucky did.

The moments after he found out he'd been incredibly jealous. His friend, who'd been the person he leaned on for so long, was leaving without him. Going off on an adventure without him and taking the one person in the world who'd care if Little Stevie Rodgers didn't wake up the next morning. Taking away the person who checked on him at night. The only other person to see his drawings.

and then...

Then he was recommended for a specific project. His world reeled as he was taken to boot, put through his, admittedly weak paces, in his grey green world filled with attractive, perfect people, so different from himself.

He made friends. Peggy, Doctor Erskine. He grew to care for them; Never the same as his old pall Bucky, but he felt a certain loyalty for the strong woman who's chin was always level with the ground, and the Doctor with the conspiratorial glint in his eye--The man had looked him over the day they met and cleared him for things other doctors in other cities previously had vehemently denied him.

The two men had sat together in the empty bunk, exchanging words, getting to know each other in hushed voices. The man seemed to be an altruist. A person who hated to see science used against human beings where it could be used for the benefit of all. 

The day of the procedure Steve steeled himself, looking out in his murky world, squinting as he identified locations where he'd been beat up for his views and virtues, where he'd sat with his best friend in the dim light of sunset and contemplated everything wrong with everything ever. He cringed as he reminded himself, and Peggy, that he was a weak man with strong morals and people didn't tend to like that very much.

And then they walked into the lab. His eyes fell on the contraption he was to be locked in, he gulped, hoping it was too quiet to be heard, hoping no one scented the fear on him, because even if he was afraid, this was needed. He was needed. His friend's project needed to succeed. He was strapped in and he fought the urge to struggle against the straps that weren't even holding him down yet. A needle went into his skin and he tried not to flinch, tossing a 'that's not so bad', playfully, at the doctor as other preparations were made around him. The contraption closed around him and he swallowed panic in a desperate sort of way, fighting not to let clausterphobia win out over his better judgment and desire to do the right thing, not just for him, but for Bucky, Peggy and Erskine, and for the people across the unfathomably vast ocean who needed some kind of help; Help he'd supposedly be able to provide if all went well.

The process was started, officially. Pain ripped through him, wrenching shrieks from his still fragile body as it was reworked. A call for an early end was put out; he could hear it, he refused. He might be physically weak but his friend's entire project HINGED on him being able to do this and he REFUSED to let him down, not him, not Peggy, not Bucky, not even the strangers across the water. He had to do this.

Bones and muscles popped and tore, reworking themselves as his body was forced to grow. Electric pulses were shot through his skin into the muscle tissue, encouraging violent, sudden contractions to force growth and strength into his body. His lungs were rejuvenated, forced to work correctly for the first time in his life. It was a strange high, not having to struggle to suck air into his chest to make his body work, and as he began to settle, and the process began to slow down, he felt himself relaxing. His head was spinning, oxygen flooding his mind and limbs in ways it never had before. He felt weak and strong all at once, and he almost couldn't stand when he was finally released from the capsule...

And then he opened his eyes.

Peggy stood close; He could see the browns in her hair and eyes, the pink in her cheeks and... Oh god. Was that red? It was the first time he'd ever seen it; brilliant and beautiful on the worried curve of his friend's mouth. It was remarkable, amazing. This was what normal people saw, all the time? This...

He wanted to cry at the sudden rush of stimulation as people began talking again, as color and movement combined for the first time as a clear image before him. It was amazing and overwhelming and he could HEAR everything. More than what he imagined a person was meant to, but he figured that was probably part of the procedure--

And then a shot rang out in the room, deafening in the din. Beside him, his friend fell, crumpled in a heap as red blossomed on his white lab coat.

His first time seeing blood in Technicolor, seeing carnage.

It wasn't his last.

Months later he stood near his friend in the dim Hydra lab, blood caked on Bucky's lips, violent purple bruises across his body. His best friend was damaged, muttering quietly in a tone Steve wouldn't have been able to hear when they were children. Fear sat like a thick serpent in his belly as he worked to get his friend free, and get out of the base. Later that fear would become a sickening stabbing pain of loss as his friend fell, supposedly to his death from the side of the train.

Red came to be associated with pain, not the beauty it had been when he first opened his eyes to color. Red was loss, red was anger and hatred and everything wrong in the world. Red was a thing to be feared.

Red was the hair on the head of the woman who was his companion and partner in crime; A woman who could kill a man with her thighs, who knew secrets no one else could possibly grasp. Red was a woman who was damaged by her old country, who didn't even know who she was anymore.

Red was the star on Bucky's shoulder the first time he saw him in almost eighty years; a man who should be dead. Red was the twisted, ugly feeling in his belly as he realized his friend didn't remember him. It was the blood that soaked his suit as he tried his damnedest not to fight, not to hurt his friend, not to do harm to a man who didn't know better.

Red was the color he saw in his mind's eye when he woke up shouting in fear, stock straight in his hospital bed, his friend steadfastly perched in the seat beside him, waiting for him to relax back and realize he wasn't in any immediate danger, before Sam pulled his chair closer, fishing around in a backpack for a sketchbook, and a pack of color pencils that was missing a particular red tool, pulled out of understanding of the other man. 

Both the book and package of tools were set gently on the soldiers' lap as the other leaned in just enough to pat his shoulder. He'd be okay with the color again one day, and he'd have all the red pencils he wanted, then, but for now... For now it sat heavy in his heart, in a place where no good thing could properly touch.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you regret me yet, Pennyworth?


End file.
